From the moment we settled on the theme for the 4 Corners
Festival 2020 in my office back in March last year I have been excited by its
potential: “Building a City of Grace” is something that I have been personally committed
to for years, and long to see as a core commitment within the church and civic
society. In the current fractious context locally, nationally and globally,
this commitment is even more important.
The festival is now in its 4th day, and having been south,
east, and north, tonight we are looking forward to a fabulous evening in the
west of the city at St Mary's Christian Brothers' Grammar School, on the Glen Road, with poet/playwright Damian
Gorman in conversation with Jude Hill, with music by singer/songwriter (and as
such no mean poet himself) Anthony Toner.
Later in the festival we will be publishing an anthology of poems
from Damian, John Hewitt,
Robert ‘Beano’ Niblock (one of the contributors to our “Grace
Beneath the Cranes event in the east of the city on Saturday night), as well as
some of the pupils who were at our first event at the UU on Friday, and a few
from some of the directors/organisers of the festival including myself. I feel
quite pleased to have one of my poems appearing between the same covers as pieces
by Damian and John Hewitt… although it may not fare well in the comparison.
I’m on a haiku kick at the moment. There is a danger of
reducing this highly precise Japanese poetic artform to something little better
than a juvenile Limerick, while purists will argue that haiku must have their
roots in nature. I have tended to follow the last rule, but there are times
when I am as frustrated by that stricture as the tendency within society, and
indeed faith, to see the city as a “necessary evil.” As a result I have been
using haiku as a way of trying to distil my spiralling thoughts into something more
focused and in the moment. In the midst of the festival that’s important to me,
if I am to play a part in it (playing catch-up as I was not involved in a lot
of the programme planning due to my sabbatical) whilst doing my day-job and not
having a nervous breakdown.
To that end I offer the following 3 haiku inspired by the
festival so far, and the contexts that produced them:
A city of grace:
Take time to imagine it
And tell its story
In some ways this is a distillation of my earlier blog post
inspired by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg (just when you thought you had heard the
last of me recycling her ideas…) and Damian Gorman’s poem “If I Was Us, I Wouldn’t
Start From Here”.
That idea then fed into the second one which was prompted by
a comment by the architect Arthur Parke at the UU event, sitting in the
Cathedral Quarter, a place where there is currently an ideological battle going
on regarding the built environment. How can we create spaces that are
conducive to creativity and relationship rather than just commerce and economic
productivity? How can we respect the past without being shackled to it? How should
we shape the spaces that will in turn shape future generations?
Build a space for grace -
A place for new perspectives
Facing the future
And finally, from last night and the “Grace Moments” event, with
Bishop Alan Abernethy and Brendan McAllister…
A grace period -
Pause to consider whether
There's a better way
Selah
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